When they each made their life-saving, fear-propelled dashes from the Century Aurora 16 theater just after midnight Friday, they initially felt relief: They were alive. They were not physically injured.

"I keep having flashbacks of what I saw when I was leaving the theater," said Graves, a 20-year-old clerk at a Netflix store. "I can't sleep. I went to work Saturday, but I couldn't focus. I keep hearing the gunshots and seeing the people covered in blood."

Amanda Gonzalez, 39, had taken her two children, two nephews and a brother to see "The Dark Knight Rises," and crawled and ran out of the exit with them when the fiction on the screen was interrupted by a real-life massacre allegedly carried out by James Eagan Holmes, a man in body armor who was carrying an assault-style rifle, shotgun and pistol.

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As ambulances and police cars screamed up to the theater, Gonzalez and her family hopped in a car and drove home before they knew what had happened. They watched a waking nightmare unfold in news reports. Gonzalez had a panic attack with headaches and vomiting. It was so bad her 10-year-old daughter thought her mom was having a seizure.

Gonzalez went to work at her fast-food job the next day — a day that felt like the longest of her life. She felt like screaming at the customers, "If you guys knew what I've just been through."

"I just consider myself so strong, but at the same time, when I'm alone, I'm weak and start crying about it," she said.

Austin, a 28-year-old student at Metropolitan State University of Denver, hasn't talked much about his feelings, but he started writing during his middle-of-the-night suffering Tuesday.

Like the others, he hasn't been able to sleep much since the shooting. Guilt keeps him awake.

"Why do I feel so much shame?" he wrote. "I didn't help anyone or even look back. I jumped over a person. That's hardly heroic. I am a big man, ... but I feel very small right now. Every time I hear about the little girl, I hang my head in shame that I didn't do more.

"Leave it to Mr. Holmes to find a way to torture the survivors just as much as he did his victims."

Psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Deborah Serani said what the theater survivors are going through is "a very normal reaction to a very unusual event."

In the initial seconds following the shooting to 48 hours later, many suffer an acute stress reaction when they are jumpy and can't sleep. After that, many move into what is called acute stress disorder. This can last a month and can bring on memory loss and an out-of-body feeling of unreality.

These symptoms are grounded in actual physical changes in the body brought on by the trauma.

Full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder can set in at the end of a month. It affects an estimated 80 percent of trauma victims if they don't seek counseling or defuse the trauma by talking about it to others, Serani said.

"The survivors are right now in the acute stress disorder phase, and this is when prevention for PTSD is most important," Serani said.

All the survivors contacted for this article say they do plan to see counselors. Some already have appointments. Gonzalez said she is trying to get her entire family into therapy.

Her nephew Rolando Salas, 12, said talking about it to friends has already helped him. Her daughter, Kimberly, said she isn't bothered by it. That was before she broke down in tears. Her 15-year-old son, Danny, is now startled by loud noises but sees an end to the survivor suffering.

"Helping you keep talking about it will make you let it go, but at some point there will be times when it will still be in your memory," he said. "You just need to get it out for a while to stop thinking about it. And be grateful."